Project Celica: New Shoes!!! New Shoes!!!

It's been a while since I updated something about my car. Thus during this long holiday, I went back to my hometown and tried to fit the new rim I bought earlier to my Celica. Before I made the payment to the rim, I did some studies on what is the best offset and width for Celica but a lot of the information were from the State and most of them running on coilovers and with camber set to fit their rims in. However for me, I prefer to have the camber set close to factory specification and I probably will running on low down spring for a while before I am able to convince myself to get a set of super strut coilover. So this is the reason why I mentioned earlier that I want to try fit the new rim to my car as I'm worry that the offset and the width do not suit Celica.

My rim comes in 2 different specifications. 18x9 ET30 for the front and 18x9 E20 for the rear. Let me explain why 2 different offsets in the first place. As you might not know that the rear of the Celica will sunk a little if running on same offset with the front. So this drive me to get a different offset for the rear to avoid this. By the way, Celica originally run on a set of 16x6.5 ET39 rim all around. Since there is about 2.5 inches increase of width, this make me worry about the rim will hit the inner wall of the wheel well and also the absorber.

Noticed that the wheels sit way out compare to the stock wheels, meaning that I need to either stripe/cut off the outer wheel arches or get them roll. Take a look closer to the image below and you may have a clearer picture of where the part is. Not pretty sure why Toyota design them like this though...

After I tried to fit them on, no problem observed. Everything works fine. Wheel able to spins, able to full turn left/right. It did not even give me problem for calipers clearance. However 1 thing does make me concern about and this is the front absorber housing. Now it only left approximately half an inch clearance between the wheel and the housing but I believe that this will not be an issue as the housing will travel up/down with the wheel on uneven surface. Hence the wheel will not hit the housing during that time. Let's cross fingers on this after the wheels are fitted. Perhaps I am a little bit too long winded over here so what I need to do now is to cut the crap and let the images do the talking.

Rear backspacing.

Rear top view.

Front wheel view.

Front backspacing.

This is the part that make me concern about. After tyre fitted in, it will be less that an inch.